The present invention relates in general to remote diagnostics and prognostics for complex systems, such as vehicles or other machinery, and, more specifically, to a vehicle telematics system and method for transmitting operating data collected on-board a vehicle to a central diagnostic center.
Complex mechanical, electrical, and electromechanical systems including automobiles, machinery, electronic control systems, and other devices are mass-produced and in widespread use. Even though manufacturers generally make continuous improvements in reliability and durability of such systems, tendencies toward failures or degraded system performance over time cannot be totally eliminated. Therefore, system monitoring and diagnostic testing is often used to detect anomalies and their causes.
Diagnostic/monitoring functions have been deployed both on-board the systems and at special testing centers. In automobile systems, for example, a combination of on-board diagnostics and service bay diagnostics is utilized to identify a problem and to isolate its cause in order to guide repair procedures in an economical fashion. Onboard diagnostic systems, however, are limited in scope and capability by cost and hardware constraints in a vehicle environment. Diagnostics at a service bay, on the other hand, are less constrained by cost or packaging space but they require that a vehicle be brought to a service bay facility before either a fault can be identified or corrective actions (e.g., obtaining replacement parts) can be initiated.
The use of remote monitoring and diagnostics and/or recording of data signals have been investigated for improving this situation, but without fully satisfactory results. Due to bandwidth limitations of remote communications channels (e.g., cellular or other RF systems), only relatively small amounts of actual data can be exported from the vehicle during normal operation. Even as greater bandwidth becomes available, it would still not be practical to merely export large volumes of data for remote analysis, especially where a large customer base (e.g., fleet of vehicles) is involved.
In-vehicle recording of data for later access at a service bay can utilize greater amounts of data if a sufficiently large recording capacity is provided. However, use of such data requires visits to a service facility and is generally useful only after degraded performance is already present.
The present invention achieves significant advantages in quick and efficient detection and prediction of failure or non-optimal performance of complex systems together with improvements in delivering corrective actions to restore optimal performance.
In one aspect of the invention, a system is provided for monitoring performance of an apparatus wherein the apparatus has a plurality of operational components, each operational component having a predetermined nominal operating state. Each operational component generates respective electrical signals pursuant to its operation. A data collection memory in the apparatus stores samples of the electrical signals in a rolling buffer. An analyzer in the apparatus is responsive to the electrical signals for detecting a trigger event indicative of at least a potential variance of an operational component from its nominal operating state. A computation center located remotely from the apparatus has a database storing representations of electrical signals for classifying nominal and irregular operating states of the operational components. A transmitter is activated by the trigger event to transmit at least some of the stored samples in the rolling buffer at the time of the trigger event to the computation center. The computation center receives the transmitted samples and classifies them according to the nominal or irregular operating states.